ReOil® – A recycling technology for used plastics
Plastics make our lives more efficient, convenient and safe. Yet, when insufficient effort is made to recover and reuse plastics, and to minimize waste, it may have adverse effects on the environment. This is where our proprietary technology ReOil® makes a valuable contribution.
What is ReOil®?
ReOil® is OMV's patented chemical recycling technology that converts end-of-life plastic waste into pyrolysis oil, a valuable resource replacing fossil resources to enable the platics-based circular economy. This innovative chemical recycling technology, complementary to mechanical recycling, processes end-of-life plastics that would otherwise be landfilled or sent to waste incineration. The resulting pyrolysis oil is then primarily used to produce high-performing and sustainable plastics. OMV was one of the first companies to develop a chemical recycling technology for used plastics more than a decade ago.
How does the ReOil® process work?
Plastics are versatile, safe, convenient and efficient and, as a material, they are unrivaled in their benefits. These properties, however, also make them difficult to break down. The ReOil® technology is based on pyrolysis, a well-known refinery process during which thermoplastics are first melted and then cracked at a temperature of about 400-450 °C. This means that long-chain hydrocarbons are cracked into shorter-chain light hydrocarbons.
What makes ReOil® special?
The ReOil® technology is unique compared to alternative technologies because of the use of an innovative heat transfer technology, which reduces the viscosity of the molten plastic, improving heat transfer. As a result, the process will be scalable to industrial scale (up to 200 kta or even more). Thanks to the integration into OMV’s refinery in Schwechat, Austria, ReOil also achieves higher yields than other non-integrated chemical recycling technologies and enables us to guarantee the best use of resources at maximum efficiency.
ReOil® in action today
Complying to the highest safety standards, the ReOil100 pilot plant has been operating in the OMV refinery in Schwechat since 2018 and has processed end-of-life plastics for more than 22,000 hours to date. Moreover, we’re scaling up our capacities in Schwechat with a new ReOil2000 demo plant, currently under construction, increasing capacity to 16,000 t/year.
ReOil® is ISCC PLUS certified
The ReOil100 pilot plant and the ReOil2000 demo plant are both certified according to the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC). ISCC PLUS is a sustainability certification that is well-recognized by all stakeholders in recycled and bio-based materials, providing traceability along the supply chain and verifying that companies meet environmental and social standards. Compliance with the certification means that for each ton of circular feedstock fed into the ReOil® plant and replacing fossil fuels, a certain proportion of the output can be classified as circular by using the mass balance approach.
What’s next
We've committed to establishing a production capacity of 2,000 kta of sustainable polymers and chemicals, i.e., polyolefin products or other chemicals derived from plastic waste (either through a mechanical or chemical recycling process) or from bio-based feedstock by 2030. Together with Borealis, we’re taking steps to reach that goal of becoming recycling technology leaders to meet anticipated market requirements, where around 60% of plastic production is expected to come from recycled feedstock.
In 2023 OMV signed a mutually exclusive collaboration agreement for the worldwide commercial licensing of OMV’s ReOil® technology with Wood, a global leader in consulting and engineering solutions in energy and material markets. This unique partnership will enable global licensees to make use of OMV’s future circular economy solutions.
OMV News
- OMV transforms plastic waste into crude oil
- OMV and ADNOC sign MoU in presence of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Austria’s Chancellor H.E. Sebastian Kurz
- OMV innovation project produces synthetic crude from Austrian Airlines plastic cups
- OMV ReOil project: OMV and Borealis extend their partnership at the industrial site in Schwechat
- OMV signs agreement to increase its shareholding in Borealis to 75%, repositioning in a low-carbon world
OMV Blog
- Plastic2Plastic: ReOil completes the circle in plastics recycling
- ReOil: Getting Crude oil back out of plastic
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